Better Usage of Titlebar

This is my first mockup.

I refer on www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=40888 and similar proposals. I like the Idea of better using the space in the title bar / window decoration. Therefore it would be a nice possibility to just drag the toolbars as well as the menu bar to the window title (as you can see, I prefer having the menu bar at the top of the screen). The problem of not having enough space in the title bar would be solved by overlapping tabs which come to front and enlarge on mouse over (no additional mouse clicking!).

Why not temporarily overlap the window title / max / min / close-button, when moving the mouse to a toolbar-tab?

If you don't like the big title-bar, yust imagine the tabs to be situated behind the working space and come to front (and temporarily overlap the working space) on mouse over.

Some points on the critics I found on item 40888 I refered to:
- if no KDE-specific window manager is present, then everything looks as usual
- if the window is sized very small, then the overlapping takes effect. If the space still doesn't suffice, why not automatically drop one of the toolbar tabs to the next line as shown in the second window.

I don't know where I have the idea from, perhaps some upcoming office- or operating system products - hopefully no one is irritated about this aspect.

post again...

since this discussion about saving space originated after a post of mine...

i'll post again some brainstorming, related to this topic...

MVC (Model, View, Controller)
applications have similar needs. open, close, quit, next, previous, save, ...be it a text file, a piece of code, a song, a picture, ... applications allow access to these actions through toolbars. and every app has its own. what if MVC was exploited and a "desktop" toolbar was made available?

on startup, apps would register as listeners and would register their behaviour. this "desktop" toolbar would then act on the active window/app.

this would save up a lot of space (and not only space) in each app and in the desktop as a whole.

possibly, other stuff may be implemented along the same lines... list of open files, bookmarks, search boxes, progress bars...

in my mind, this would be handy, 'cause the same action/feature/object would always be in the same place, would always look the same way, ...

of course apps should leave the freedom to choose between "inlined" features vs "nearlined".

I think it would be neat in KDE 4 to have in the titlebars space that can be accesed by the application. It could be used for progress bars, search boxes, or anything else.

Wasted space

To me, your mockup looks like a complete waste of space. It still takes up the same height as having them seperate, but there are a load of ugly gaps all over the place, and as mentioned, the most common point people use to move windows had been obstructed.

If it wasn't for those cunky buttons, your title bar + toolbars would take up < 1/3 of the space. Perhaps allowing the buttons to overlap the title bar but keep everything else as normal would achieve what you want a bit more elegantly.

How do you like Plasma 5? The best KDE Desktop ever. Definitely a nice improvement. Not decided yet. Haven't tried it yet. I do not like some of the changes. KDE is taking the wrong way. I am still sticking with KDE 3.5. I have no opinion, but wanted to vote anyway.

Copyright 2001-2015 KDE-Look.org Team All rights reserved. KDE-Look.org is not liable for any content or goods on this site.All contributors are responsible for the lawfulness of their uploads.KDE and K Desktop Environment are trademarks of KDE e.V.